Monkey in the Middle by Stephen Solomita

regular guy, until you looked into his eyes.
    Carter’s eyes are blue and flat. They’re as dead as his soul and he knows it. But the girl isn’t looking into his eyes. She’s glancing, from time to time, at his body. Fully clothed, Carter may not impress, may even appear harmless, but now his flesh ripples over his skeleton as he paces off a six-minute mile, his thighs and calves especially.
    â€˜How long does it take?’ Carter asks.
    â€˜Before what?’
    â€˜Before you internalize the lesson and switch to another show.’
    The woman looks at him for a moment, her face reddening, then turns away. She’s insulted, obviously, though Carter meant no offense. He was just curious. But Carter tends to say the wrong thing. All that time alone before Janie saved him? He never learned the rules. Never learned the subtleties of give and take.
    His workout concluded, Carter hops on the 19A bus running along Twenty-First Street into Long Island City. He exits at Thirty-Eighth Avenue and walks three blocks to a rented garage where he picks up his van. From there, he heads into Manhattan, via the Fifty-Ninth Street Bridge, to his final destination, the Cabrini Nursing Center. Carter’s in a good mood, and so is Janie, whose eyes sparkle when he enters her room at eleven thirty. The nurses have Janie sitting in a recliner and Carter settles on the edge of her bed.
    â€˜I have to work late tonight, so I took the morning off,’ he explains.
    Blink.
    â€˜Everything going all right?’
    Blink.
    Carter leans closer. He smiles. ‘Are you stoned? Did you get morphine this morning?’
    Blink.
    â€˜I thought as much.’ Carter wishes his mock-frown could draw a smile he can only imagine. The joke is that Janie was as straight as they come before her illness, an anti-drug zealot. ‘I met a girl this morning. At the gym.’
    Carter continues, embellishing freely as he describes Jerry Springer’s repugnant guests. In this version, the girl on the treadmill next to him defends the show. Carter’s problem, she explains, is that he takes the mayhem, most of which is staged, way too seriously.
    â€˜Do you know what I finally said to her?’
    Blink, blink.
    â€˜I told her that some men are born without souls and that some have their souls burned away. But what kind of man – or woman, for that matter – uses his soul for toilet paper? Janie, the girl was a real knockout, but I blew any chance I had right there. She thought I was talking about her.’
    Blink.
    Carter grins. ‘OK, I admit it. I probably was talking about her. But if degradation amuses her . . . I mean, what’s the point? We’re not goin’ anywhere.’
    Blink.
    Another smile from Carter. His propensity for driving women away has been an issue since he was an adolescent. ‘You want me to read for a while?’
    Blink.
    Carter takes the bible from a drawer and opens it to Proverbs. He begins where he left off on the night before.
    â€˜The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his ways, before he made anything from the beginning. I was set up from eternity, and of old before the earth was made. The depths were not as yet, and I was already conceived, neither had the fountains of waters as yet sprung out. The mountains had not yet been established; before the hills I was brought forth. He had not yet made the earth, nor the rivers, nor the poles of the world. When he prepared the heavens, I was present; when he enclosed the depths; when he established the sky above, and poised the fountains of waters; when he compassed the sea with its bounds, and set a law to the waters that they should not pass their limits; when he balanced the foundations of the earth. I was with him forming all things.’
    Carter shakes his head. There are times when the desire to retrieve his life overwhelms him. When he wishes there was a redo button in his brain like the one on his computer.